From the University of Virginia Magazine, a special section on 17 Days in June: From Resignation to Reinstatement. Shiny happy periodicals — read all about it: Fred Inglis on the horn-blowing and the hoopla, the cant and the can-do spirit of the glossy world of official university magazines. How corrupt are Ivy League admissions? Ron Unz on the myth of American meritocracy (and a response). Master of the examined life: Paula Marantz Cohen on teaching what colleges don’t. Inspiration from The Teaching Professor: After 25 years, a newsletter on teaching and learning in academe is still going strong. Todd Landman is the world’s first visiting professor of performance magic. Is student debt a gift or a curse? Philosophy lovers, prepare to be outraged: Should science majors pay less for college than art majors? Roderick T. Long reviews The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind by Bruce Bawer (and more). Are “hookups” replacing romantic relationships on college campuses? Emily Esfahani Smith reviews Sex and God at Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad by Nathan Harden.
Philip Balsiger (EUI): Competing Tactics: How the Interplay of Tactical Approaches Shapes Movement Outcomes on the Market for Ethical Fashion. Numidas Prasarn on the evolution of fashion as a signifier. How did "fix the debt" become "protect the Bush tax cuts"? A group devoted to reducing the deficit shouldn't embrace the irresponsible tax cuts that created most of it. From The Hairpin, Stella Forstner writes a series on her experience with Scientology. Kevin Kelly on the average place on Earth. Stacy Edgar reviews Politics in Deeply Divided Societies by Adrian Guelke. Creating a global language archive: For most of us, the language we speak is like the air we breathe — but what happens when we wake up and find that our air is going extinct? "Merchants of Death": Jonathan Grant on the international traffic in arms. Ron Paul's farewell speech in Congress lays bare his hatred for "pure democracy," and love of oligarchy. From Books and Culture, David Lyle Jeffrey on beauty in an ugly time: Rouault and Chagall. Stephen T. Asma writes in defense of favoritism (and more). Here is an open letter to Mauro E. Mujica, chairman of U.S. English Inc.
Robert S. Erikson and Olle Folke (Columbia) and James M. Snyder (Harvard): A Gubernatorial Helping Hand? How Governors Affect Presidential Elections. Spencer Overton (GWU): The Participation Interest. Did Obama reset the electoral map? Lincoln, liberty and two Americas: One-party control in a majority of the states may allow the pursuit of wildly partisan agendas — what will that do to the nation as a whole? John Patrick Leary on how concerns over declining “civility” in politics distract us from the meaningful disagreements that we need to have. Eric Horowitz on why personal attacks are good politics. Taking the fight outside: Can presidential appeals to the American public break Washington gridlock? The unilateralist manifesto: Timothy Noah on eight ways Obama can jam through his agenda without Congress. Paul Volcker on what the new president should consider. Erik Opsal on three ways to fix our democracy. Bruce Bartlett on how our long-term fiscal future is better than it looks. Move over economists: Barry Schwartz why we need a council of psychological advisers. Is Grover Norquist pushing the New World Order? Many right-wing extremists loathe Norquist because they think he is a secret Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood operative. Can Grover Norquist be considered an “enemy of the state”?
Machiko Kanetake (Amsterdam): The UN Zero Tolerance Policy's Whereabouts: On the Discordance between Politics and Law on the Internal-External Divide. From Catapult, a special issue on First World Problems. From NYRB, Elizabeth Drew on how, despite their considerable efforts, the Republicans were not able to buy or steal the election after all; and Mark Danner on how, and what, Obama won. Micah Zenko on Dempsey's Paradox: The world is getting less violent — so why do we feel so threatened? Jeffrey Winters argues that oligarchy is timeless, but varying in its forms; for him, the political power of billionaires in democracies represents a transformation towards “civil oligarchy”. Barry Schwartz on what it means to be rational: Don't rely on economic analysis to learn about human rationality; if we want to build just and prosperous societies, we must look elsewhere for guidance. What brand is your therapist? Lori Gottlieb on psychotherapy’s struggle to sell itself. Urging economists to step away from the blackboard: A 101-year-old Nobel winner, Ronald Coase wants to launch a journal for economic thought, not just data. A UN Twitter typo has global dimensions.
A new issue of The Philosophers’ Magazine is out. The inaugural issue of the Nordic Wittgenstein Review is out, including Alex Davies (King’s College): How to Use (Ordinary) Language Offensively; Thomas McNally and Sinead McNally (TCD): Chomsky and Wittgenstein on Linguistic Competence; and Todor Polimenov interviews Gottfried Gabriel on the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy. Torfinn Thomesen Huvenes reviews Experimental Philosophy: An Introduction by Joshua Alexander. From 3:AM, Chris Weigel is a groovy philosophical firebrand who burns her armchair alongside xphi’s pyromaniac Josh Knobe; Herman Cappelen is one groovaciously pugnacious philosophical dude; Roy Sorensen is the madhatter at the philosophical tea-party, the grooviest jive of them all; and Richard Moran digs Sartre as essential, unfairly bad-mouthed and like John Lennon. Rupert Read on his book A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes. Whoa, dude, we’re not inside a computer right now: Johannes Niederhauser interviews Massimo Pigliucci, author of Answers for Aristotle. Rick Pimentel on reasons to love philosophy.
Shiv Visvanathan (JGU): Interrogating the Nation. Nikola Purkovic (Westminster): What Role Do Nationalisms Play in the (In) Stability of Russia and China? An interview with Ali Ansari, author of The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran. Anatol Lieven on chauvinism and idealism in American nationalism. Artem Kaznatcheev on remembering the dangers of nationalism. From Infoshop News, welcome back to the 30s: An article on the rebirth of radical nationalism. Daniel Snowman reviews Histories of Nations: How their Identities Were Forged, ed. Peter Furtado. A review of The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany by Caspar Hirschi. Andrew F. Smith reviews Collective Identity, Oppression, and the Right to Self-Ascription by Andrew J. Pierce. A review of Multiculturalism: A Critical Introduction by Michael Murphy. An interview with Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt, authors of The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism (and more). A question of identity: The nation-state is shrinking to just a flag, some sports teams and a pile of debts. The Animaniacs song "Nations of the World" names 160 places in less than 2 minutes — can you name them all in 10?
From the Journal of Business Anthropology, a series of contributors on what business anthropology is, what it might become and what, perhaps, it should not be. From Nerve, Lizzie Plaugic on why everyone should be insulted by the term "friend zone". Jacques Morizot reviews Painting Borges: Philosophy Interpreting Art Interpreting Literature by Jorge J.E. Gracia. Dylan Trigg reviews The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory by Anneleen Masschelein. From The Montreal Review, Leigh Donaldson on America’s love affair with cars. The realism of Lincoln is just the flip side of the hagiography of Lincoln: Only a country steeped in myths of innocence would find the most conventional and boring kind of realism about politics to be the trumpet blast of Truth, Brave Truth. What happens now that the war on drugs has failed? Benjamin Wallace-Wells wonders. Paul Waldman on why Obama won't be the one to end the war on drugs: It's the inverse of Nixon going to China. Matthew Yglesias is against the grand bargain: A long-term deficit deal is impossible, and the quest for one is hurting the country. Why do grammatical errors turn Jekylls into Hydes? Jessica Love on the liberal grammar fanatic.
A new issue of Prism is out. From Strategic Studies Quarterly, a special section on cyber-warfare, including Martin C. Libicki (RAND): The Specter of Non-Obvious Warfare. Kevin Jon Heller (Melbourne): “One Hell of a Killing Machine”: Signature Strikes and International Law. Jamie L.H. Goodall reviews The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe by David Parrott. Brian Donohue on how the Air Force is now openly seeking cyber-weapons. Paul Hockenos reviews Ending Wars Well: Order, Justice and Conciliation in Contemporary Post-Conflict by Eric Patterson. Who will be accountable for military technology? As drones, robots, and even enhanced soldiers take the battlefield, questions of responsibility get more complicated. Erik Voeten on how to improve the drones debate. Five writers, including three veterans, respond to Chris Hedges's provocative essay "War Is Betrayal". Cyber fail: Why can't the government keep hackers out? Because the public is afraid of letting it. Jeff McMahan on rethinking the “just war” (and part 2). You can't go home again: Soldiers aren’t the only veterans of war.
Mark C. Weidemaier (UNC) and G. Mitu Gulati (Duke): A People's History of Collective Action Clauses. Sascha-Dominik Oliver Vladimir Bachmann (Lincoln) and Gerhard Kemp (Stellenbosch): Aggression as “Organized Hypocrisy”? How the War on Terrorism and Hybrid Threats Challenge the Nuremberg Legacy. An interview with Andrew P. Smiler, author of Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male. Wall Street should hate itself: A Goldman Sachs tell-all gets panned for the wrong reasons, showing how financial journalists are in bed with CEOs. What are a bunch of hipsters doing in Green River, Utah? Stella Ghervas reviews Five Types of Peace: A History of the Plans for Perpetual Peace, 17th - 20th centuries by Bruno Arcidiacono. Tax the churches and give the revenue to hungry children. A review of This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made by Frederick Hoxie. From Boston magazine, what happened to the alternative weekly The Boston Phoenix — and can it rise again? Peter Vigneron investigates. It’s worth being clear about something: Grover Norquist is winning — big time.
Francesco Mezzanotte (Rome3): The Interrelation Between Intellectual Property Licenses and The Doctrine of "Numerus Clausus": A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis. Mark A. Lemley (Stanford): The Regulatory Turn in IP. John Tehranian (Southwestern): Towards a Critical IP Theory: Copyright, Consecration and Control. Stacey L. Dogan (BU) and Mark A. Lemley (Stanford): Parody As Brand. Christian Peukert (Munich) and Jorg Claussen (CBS): Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload. Open access and closed minds: Nalaka Gunawardene on balancing intellectual property and public interest in the digital age. The case of the vanishing policy memo: An influential conservative group released a copyright reform memo that was so smart it had to immediately disavow it. Ryan Tate on how Facebook is trying to debunk a copyright hoax. Apple hopes to take more prisoners in its patent war against arch rival Samsung. Cade Metz on why Microsoft says the patent system is peachy. Alex Tabarrok on ending software patents. The patent, mighty as a sword: Alongside the impressive technological advances of the last two decades, software patents started to be used as destructive weapons, stifling competition.